Velvet Underground legend Lou Reed holds a rare press conference at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where he voices his concern about the NSA's surveillance methods as revealed by the Guardian. He also discusses the financial challenges for musicians in an era of free downloads and streaming services

Lou has one point. The punks who steal the songs now....aren’t paying into the pot of money that the old rock guys used to make a fair amount of money for retirement purposes. So those wasted millions as a 21-year old....aren’t around today, and no real income from the CD sales or on-line sales.

The best (or least the most popular) of them will collect a few coins via iTunes and the like but the big money will come from the live audiences. Unfortunately many young singers and musicians still believe that you can write a few songs, cut a CD every couple of years and lead the good life.

I don't think so. Time to get off your rear ends and find some folks who will pay you to do your music live.

12
posted on 06/23/2013 5:40:44 AM PDT
by InterceptPoint
(If I had a tag line this is where you would find it)

The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers.[6] Before the invention of the printing press, a writing, once created, could only be physically multiplied by the highly laborious and error-prone process of manual copying by scribes. An elaborate system of censorship and control over scribes existed.[7] Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information (see print culture).[6] Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time.[7]

Okay, in that case, I want you to go buy a car, and drive it once. Then give it to me at no cost, so I can drive it and pass it along to someone else.

When someone creates (writes) a song, he owns it. It is his property, just like your car and home are your property. If there is money to be made off the song, (the property), it is the right of the songwriter, or whoever owns the rights to the property, to determine how the money will be made, and to whom it will go. Sing it once and get paid once? Yeah right, tell that to Bill Gates, or anyone else who owns intellectual property.

Spent a lot of money on records, 8-tracks, cassettes, and CDs too. I’ve still got a crapload of CDs that I periodically listen to when I’m in my car. Hopefully my kids will be able to get rid of them on eBay after I die.

24
posted on 06/23/2013 8:15:05 AM PDT
by mass55th
(Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway...John Wayne)

By your flawed reasoning, if I buy a car, the manufacturer would be charging me in perpetuity for every mile I drive, prohibiting me from loaning the car to my neighbor without additional payment to the manufacturer, dictating how and when I may drive the vehicle, and how and when I might sell the vehicle to some other party.

No, by my reasoning, if you create something, it's as much your property as anything you purchase or work for. Some people make money with a computer, some make money with a hammer, musicians make money (not a whole lot, but sometimes we actually do get paid) with a guitar, a piano, or other instrument. When we make money for the music we create, it's no different than someone getting paid for selling insurance or mortgages...it's just a lot more fun.

The songs I've written, and for which I've registered the copyright, are my property, as much as my truck, my house, my guns and my guitars. It's up to me to determine how much and how often I get paid for them, who has the right to use them, in what manner, etc. Anyone who uses my songs without (my) permission, illegally downloads them, or steals the lyrics and/or music is violating my rights.

BMI and ASCAP used to, and presumably still do, collect a fee from the sale of all blank music media -- cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, CD and DVD-RWs, etc. This money was split evenly between members, to compensate for those people who made copies of albums to share. I don't know what they're doing about illegal file sharing, if there's anything that can be done. But make no mistake, pirating music is stealing, as much as if I stole your car and took it for a joy ride, or broke into your house while you were on vacation and squatted there for a week.

Those who steal music online are no better than muggers, shoplifters, or anyone else who takes stuff that isn't theirs.

Oh, cry me a river, Lou. You weren’t complaining when RCA was funding your drug addictions with advances, when you showed up shitfaced for performances that working people shelled out their hard earned dollars for. You still get your composer royalties, minus the splits you agreed to make with the greedy publishers.

Sing it once and get paid once? Yeah right, tell that to Bill Gates, or anyone else who owns intellectual property.

Tell that to the guy who wrote MS-DOS and was paid $10,000 flat rate. The guy never even saw a penny a copy for the billions of installations of it over the years...

More like the business practices of Alan Klein or the suits at Atlantic records who stole the US publishing money on the Beatles, the Stones, and the Stax Records artists when the slipped them revised "contracts".

Originally when recorded music began, in America you didn’t have to pay the songwriter (the money was in sheet music, around 50 cents).

Then the industry changed the law.

And you didn’t have to pay anybody to play records on the radio (the labels would even send stations the recordings to be sure to get them in the library since it was unlikely for the station to BUY music when other labels gave them free inventory).

Then the industry changed the law. Several laws in fact. Live musicians feared that they would not get as much work because stations would play recordings rather than hiring live talent. So stations dating back to the 1920s pay intoa fund for gigs for live musicians. I think some of this gets tapped when you find a station that sponsors “free concerts in the park” with decades old performers.

Now as copyrights are to risk of lapsing into the public domain, the laws were changed yet again.

Homeland Security considers music and movie piracy to be a “national security” issue.

BMI and ASCAP used to, and presumably still do, collect a fee from the sale of all blank music media -- cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, CD and DVD-RWs, etc. This money was split evenly between members, to compensate for those people who made copies of albums to share

I happen to use "all blank music media" that you list to record my own music, text, photo and film. Why am I paying this fee? Who's being robbed here?

" Tell that to the guy who wrote MS-DOS and was paid $10,000 flat rate. The guy never even saw a penny a copy for the billions of installations of it over the years...

More like the business practices of Alan Klein or the suits at Atlantic records who stole the US publishing money on the Beatles, the Stones, and the Stax Records artists when the slipped them revised "contracts".

Uh, yeah...and?

I'm not denying that creative types get screwed out of what's owed to them. IF your examples did not sign contracts enabling the people buying their creations to do what they did (and that is an "if" that needs to be considered), then they were screwed. No doubt about it...it happens. But that doesn't make it right, moral or legal.

My point is that when someone steals someone else's song (or any other creation) -- be it by the label screwing the artist out of money, or some Generation.com punk illegally sharing songs -- it's theft. Just as stealing a car, shoplifting a bag of chips from the Kwiki-Mart, or making a bootleg copy of software at work, those who illegally share downloaded music are thieves. In all those cases, someone is taking something they don't own from someone who does, and not paying them for it.

So whether it's Bill Gates, Lou Reed, the guy who wrote DOS, or a struggling local band, if they own the rights to their creations, they are entitled to make money from each copy sold or shared. But in this digital world, coming up with a way to enforce those rights proving difficult.

I don't get your point. Do Roger Waters or David Gilmour own the rights to the phrase, "apples and oranges" (I kind of doubt it)? Also, if the downloads are being offered for free, well, that's the right of whoever owns the downloaded material. So the point is moot.

You do realize, don't you, that just because they do it, those who own the rights to those videos do have the right to demand payment for their use? I'm a former reporter, who has been paid by some of the national networks for my reports, and have worked at stations that pay stringers for their video and audio. Had we ever used that video or audio without the stringer's permission, we were liable. Had the networks ever used my reports without paying me, there would have definitely been a lawsuit!

So just because someone's video or audio has been lifted from You Tube doesn't mean they weren't paid for it. To do so would open the station/network up to lawsuits, which trust me, they don't want.

Then again, there's also the whole concept of "fair use", which is another topic altogether.

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